KL to recruit first in farm sector

Recruitment of 30,000 workers starts next year

Staff Correspondent

Ending a four-year ban, Malaysia will initially recruit 30,000 Bangladeshi workers for its plantation sector from early next year.

“It will also recruit gradually workers in the manufacturing, construction, agriculture and service sectors. This is a milestone in the history of the country's manpower export sector,” Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain said yesterday.

He was briefing newsmen at the ministry's conference room about signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Malaysian government.

The Southeast Asian country will appoint the workers for five years in three phases. The first two phases will last two years each, while the last phase will take a year.

Registration of the interested workers will begin this month through the website of Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET).

“After registering online, the workers will be called up at the 13 BMET Technical Training Centres across the country for verifying their applications,” noted the minister.

The workers would be selected on district quotas based on the requirements of the recruiters. If needed, the job seekers would be able to take loan from Expatriate Welfare Bank, he added.

Secretary of the ministry Zafar Ahmed Khan said an unskilled worker would get a minimum salary equivalent to Tk 25,000, while the skilled workers would get more. “The workers will have to work eight hours a day, six days a week and they will enjoy overtime facility.”

The minister warned the job seekers not to give money to any middleman or recruiting agency.

Against the backdrop of brokers' meddling and some recruiting agencies' irregularities in the recruitment process, Malaysia had stopped recruiting Bangladeshi workers at the end of 2008.

From now on, Bangladeshi workers will be sent to Malaysia under government-to-government arrangements. It will cost a job seeker a maximum of Tk 40,000 to land a job there, mentioned Mosharraf.

Investigations had earlier revealed that workers were charged over Tk 2 lakh each for a job in Malaysia, though the government-fixed rate was Tk 84,000. To maximise their profit, some manpower syndicates even sent additional workers, leaving them (workers) in trouble abroad.

On November 26, Mosharraf and S Subramaniam, human resources minister of Malaysia, signed the MoU on manpower recruitment at Putrajaya International Convention Centre.

The Bangladesh government held detailed talks with the Malaysian human resource minister in Dhaka in September to start sending Bangladeshi workers under state arrangements.

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Malaysia recruits from our country only for this sector (plantation) because no other nationalities will work in this sector because of serious health risk factor and poor pay. Working long hours, housed in very poor condition often in jungle conditions, poor food, isolated totally from city areas...it is the duty of the BMET to make this known to all those poor job-seekers. Attack from jungle animals often poisonous snakes, Malaria from mosquitoes, I hope our minister Mr Mosharraf understand this issue clearly and make sure no play-up please. Actually for Plantation (Palm oil) sector in Malaysia is flourishing as int’l price for edible oil and other products from it are lucrative business. Those big corporations in Malaysia often pay for everything including plane fare. BMET should not be charging any fees at all generally. I hope someone checks the facts properly.

: Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani

It is a drop in the ocean but we hope KL will take lot more as we have so many idol people in Bangladesh.

: Selma

Comments

neutralMonday, December 3, 2012 02:42 AM GMT+06:00 (117 weeks ago)

Another venture for opening and closing before any actual work of recruitment for farm labour will start for agri-sector in Malaysia. It is essential to outline and make public announcement of cost of hiring a labour, male-female ratio, political quota, special groups quota, lobbyist quota and its impact on the total cost a labour has to pay against how much he or she will earn during the prior of employment. It is also necessary to announce any subsidiary benefits like medical benefits, health insurance and maternity leave etc. Very few people would see and understand the web page of the ministry. This is good news for the middlemen or women to start the business even before the business has started in reality.